Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus in the final match of the Connecticut Open tennis tournament, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018, in New Haven, Conn. (Jessica Hill / AP)

The Connecticut Open tennis tournament has laid off two full-time staffers as it evaluates future changes, tournament director Anne Worcester confirmed Tuesday.

Worcester said Connecticut Open leadership will explore the possibility of moving from late-summer to another time of year and lowering its prize-money payouts.

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“While this evaluation period is on-going and with a commitment to ensuring a future for a tournament in New Haven, the Connecticut Open has begun a cost-cutting process including scaling back full-time staff to keep operating costs at a minimum,” Worcester said in an email.

Worcester said the tournament had eight employees until recently but that one left for a new job and another was a seasonal employee whose contract ended in September. The two layoffs bring the total staff down to four.

Held annually in New Haven since 1998, the Connecticut Open has struggled in recent years to draw crowds and generate revenue. Worcester said the event will seek a title sponsor for 2019, as its financial model “does not work” without one. The 2018 tournament had 75 total sponsors.

Attendance for the event, which features women’s singles and doubles as well as a men’s “Legends” draw, has hovered around 50,000 in recent years, but crowds often appear sparse even in the later rounds.

Meanwhile, the tournament has had a difficult time drawing top players. In the past, the Connecticut Open’s placement a week before the U.S. Open in New York served it well, as highly ranked talent saw it as a valuable tuneup. Now, however, players sometimes worry that playing in New Haven could leave them tired or hurt the following week in Queens. This year, highly seeded players Simona Halep, Kiki Bertens and Petra Kvitova withdrew or retired from the Connecticut Open due to injury before appearing a week later at the U.S. Open.

Worcester suggested the tournament could move to July, when there may be fewer fans away on vacation.

In recent years, the Connecticut Open has received significant subsidies from the state, which spent $1.5 million to help fund upgrades to its facilities in 2016. The state’s annual payouts have dropped from $600,000 in 2012 to $250,000 in 2018, as part of an agreement that will expire in 2020. At that point, the event is expected to be self-sustaining.

Tax forms filed in 2016 by The Tennis Foundation of Connecticut, which runs the Connecticut Open, reported about $6 million in total revenue for the previous year against about $5 million in expenses.